A Thousand Years
by Jadethevampirequeen
Summary: Marceline may be a thousand years old, but Princess Bubblegum has been eighteen for a very long time. Marceline/Bubblegum
1. Chapter 1

Marceline and Princess Bubblegum were friends, once upon a time. Bubblegum supposes they still are. They just... stopped for a while. Marceline wanted her to loosen up and have some fun. Bubblegum wanted Marceline to just stop every once in a while, and THINK. Think beyond herself.

"Do you ever take anything seriously?" Bubblegum asked once. She was trying to repair ancient texts and use them to reconstruct something called a gunne. The book was full of trebuchets and lasers and eyes that could see across oceans. Marceline was trying to get her to go and race penguins to the cove where the monster koi slept.

"Do I ever-" Marceline paused. Without looking up Bubblegum knew that she was still floating. A whoosh of air was the only warning she had that Marceline was moving, and the book was ripped from her hands. "Do I-" Marceline's head was bowed slightly, hair falling across her face, obscuring everything but her right eye and the corner of her downturned mouth. There was something serious in her visible eye, something in the way her fingers clenched at the edges of the book that reminded Bubblegum of how much older and "grunge" the other girl was, and Bubblegum started to lean in, whilst brushing away the heavy, dark hair back from Marceline's face and behind the point of her ear.

The book bursts into flames.

"My book!" Bubblegum can't stop herself from shouting, running for water as Marceline drops the flaming mass of fluttering pages to the floor.

"Leave it," Marceline says, smacking the glass of water from her hand. Bubblegum darts her eyes from the burning book and up to Marceline, and her words die in her throat. Marceline's eyes are dark and sharp, her cool fingers, still around Bubblegum's wrist, are tight.

"But-"

"I said leave it."

And they stand there as it burns. There are so few things left from before the Mushroom War. Or there are many things left from before the war, the rusted metal carriages that dot the landscape and video tapes and machines whose purpose hundreds of Candy scholars could devote their lives to arguing about. There are so few things of use left from before the war, though. Things that explain or describe or recount history. It's almost as if someone wanted to destroy them, but she can't understand why anyone would do that to knowledge.

"We're better off without that," Marceline says, her hands tightening around Bubblegum's wrist.

Bubblegum feels herself pull back from the pictures and words that had been inside the book. There is something in Marceline's face that both softens and frightens her. "It was one of kind," she says softly, because who knows what she could have found. What knowledge was in that book is gone forever.

Marceline releases her wrist and floats back. Bubblegum's skin feels hot where the cold pressure is gone. "You're right," Marceline says, grinning wildly, but choking on her words as if she was trying to hold tears back. "I am completely incapable of taking things seriously."

"That's not what I –"

"Always have been."

Bubblegum wants to know what she's missing. It's easy to figure out what's bugging her subjects. If they're hungry or cold or unsatisfied with their jobs, if they were born marzipan when they wanted nothing more than to be meringue. Marceline is a Vampire Queen without any subjects, who laughs at ghosts and people who cringe away from her in fear, who blows off parties and plays awful pranks and still hasn't forgiven her father for eating her fries.

And Marceline shrugs, and she's just Marceline again. "I'm going to go and try to tame the monster koi," she says, pulling out an umbrella as she pushed out the window to float outside in the sunshine. "I haven't been waterskiing in centuries."

It's another one of those things that doesn't make sense to Bubblegum, that she hasn't found in any book, like bungee jumping or -

"You wanna come with?"

And it's only then that Bubblegum realizes that Marceline is waiting for her, hovering outside the windowsill expectantly. "I-I can't. You know that."

Marceline shrugs and she's suddenly so very far way. "Your loss."

"I have responsibilities. You know that."

"Whatever," Marceline says, twirling the umbrella to catch the sun as she arcs off into the bright blue sky.

"I don't understand you," Bubblegum says, staring after her, ash at her feet. She wonders if Marceline could have heard her say that. "I don't understand you at all." It makes her uncomfortable, uneasy.

Her wrist is still warm.


	2. Chapter 2

Between zombie attacks and black holes, the occasional uprising of ultimate evil and the Ice King's semi-regular kidnapping attempts/successes, the Candy Kingdom pretty much runs itself. It leaves time for the important things in life, like science fairs, whistling death matches, tea parties, peace conferences, and coming up with the formula to reverse zombie uprisings.

She likes to leave time as well for the things that aren't important, like quantifying the colour red, an adventure now and then, and she would also use to spend time with Marceline when they were closer, and when she felt "stirrings" for her deep down. The kingdom may pretty much run itself, but emergencies come up too often for her to just leave.

"Hey, PB!" someone says behind her. It is a testament to how involved she is in her chalkboard that it takes her a moment to process who it is. "Whatcha doing?" Finn is the only one who calls her that. Jake sometimes, but he sounds different because he's a dog. Everyone else calls her Princess, or Princess Bubblegum. Marceline is the only one since her grandmother who calls her by her given name.

"Hi, Finn!" Bubblegum chirps back, or tries to. It is only around the frog in her throat that she realizes there are three boards full of equations before her, and that Peppermint Butler has left a stack of sandwiches on the desk. The bread is long since dry. "Gwiffa eqaschwuns," she says around a mouthful of sandwich, because the mallow fluff filling has gone tacky and weird.

"Do you need something to drink?" Finn asks. "You need something to drink."

"I'm fine, Finn" Bubblegum calls out in reply. "Glitter equations."

"Glitter equations?" Finn asks.

Science squeaks as Bubblegum lowers the sandwich into his cage. Peppermint Butler would be sad if he found the remains of her carefully prepared lunch. "What I'm working on. Glitter equations."

"Oh."

"You know how if you have glitter out, it gets on everything, even things you thought were put away?"

Finn shrugs. "I guess. I mean, I'm a boy. Boys don't play with glitter."

Jake laughs from the doorway. He's short today, compact. Slightly shiny. "Dude, you played with glitter last night! You used it to decorate the macaroni picture you made of yourself and Princess Bub-" And Finn then turns to jump forward and clamp his hand over the dog's mouth.

"Shut up, man," he huffs.

Bubblegum grins. Steps forward and swipes a finger across the back of Finn's shirt, make him jump and spin around to face her. His face, still red, flushes even more as she holds up a finger to show him the glitter she swiped from the swath running all the way down his back.

"So you know what I'm talking about, then." She grins. "You don't even have to have been using it for glitter to get everywhere. I'm using chaos theory to try to predict its migration." On the board there are equations tracking the spread of glitter from a single card, the progress of the reflective flakes as they traverse mounts and snow and scatter for the beaches that ring the land of Ooo entirely. Maybe one day she will join them where waves meet sand and follow them into the ocean, across the horizon and see where the currents take them.

For now, though, this is just fine, and she laughs and tries to predict the spiraling tracks the glitter will take across her blackboards and lab tables.

* * *

Marceline comes back, of course. Wanders in giggling and whirling Finn all up in her schemes and her plans and her songs.

"Where did you go?" she asks Marceline, eventually when Finn and Jake have left to adventure. They are in the royal laboratory, Bubblegum wrapped up in her lab coat and bent close over the cloudy purple potion she is brewing.

Marceline, floating by her chemical cabinet and paging slowly through old texts, shrugs. "Here. There. Everywhere. A few places that don't exist yet. You would have like those, Bonnibelle."

"You're the only one who calls me that, you know. Apart from my grandmother," Bubblegum says. She holds her hands out to Marceline. "Snuffleberry juice." The vial is placed into her hand.

"What, not even your parents?"

Bubblegum shrugs. "They might have, if they'd known me." Her grandmother made her from the bits and pieces they left behind - gum from her mother's shoulder, her father's right foot. It's right that they would make something as beautiful as you, her grandmother used to tell her. Ooo has not always been as peaceful as it is now. It's why she builds her subjects as she does - small balls of excitement focused on living day to day, on their futures and dreams, on wonder and kindness. The snuffleberry juice makes the potion canary yellow, but it's still cloudy. She frowns. "The Ice King has been getting worse," she says. It's not that she doesn't normally appreciate the break in routine the kidnappings give her, but they're just getting so blasted frequent.

"I think it's Finn," Marceline says. "The Ice King was human, once. Before the Mushroom War."

Bubblegum nods as she adds another drop of children's laughter to the potion before her. "I was afraid of that." It's been so long since there were humans in Ooo. She's part human, yes, but she never was human. Humans are something that were just, a long time ago.

"It's weird," Marceline says. "Seeing humans again." Bubblegum doesn't know if Marceline was ever human. If she was always a vampire, or if she was something… else… before she turned. Marceline doesn't talk about it. Doesn't talk about the Mushroom War, even when Bubblegum begs to know, to find out more. This place is way better, she says, throwing her arms out and cackling. Bubblegum - she wants to know what it was like back when they had science, when it was something separate from magic and the two didn't intertwine and feed back on each other like the worldsnakes from the Fire Kingdom.

"I don't think it's doing any harm," Bubblegum says. "Letting Finn stop the Ice King." She adds a drop of early morning dew and the potion clears. "We could all use the break now and then."

Marceline laughs and sneaks an arm around her shoulders. "Why Bonnibelle," she says. Her breath tickles the base of Bubblegum's ear. "We'll make an adventurer of you yet."

**Hi everyone, this is my first fanfic so reviews and advice are much appreciated C: Marceline and Princess Bubblegum are my favourite pairing, I will update as often as I can, thank you for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

**This chapter is very short, I just wanted to update and focus more on Marceline and Bubblegum together, thank you for reading :)**

Despite Marceline's promise to Princess Bubblegum, she soon left the kingdom, departing without her to adventure more. This saddened Bubblegum, but she did not quite know why, really.  
Deep down she knew she did not want Marceline to leave her side, certainly not for that long. She wanted to keep Marceline as hers. And when Marceline was at her side, she knew she was safe.

Bonni, Marceline calls her, sometimes. Bella. BB. Bebe. Bubblegum had woken one night to find Marceline crouched upside down on her bedroom ceiling. It was five years since the library, since Marceline had left, and Bubblegum had been eighteen for four and a half of them. All Bubblegum felt was a fluttering mix of relief and anger. Are you staying, she didn't ask.

They stared at each other for a long time, Marceline's hair gently swimming against gravity.

"Does it ever bother you that your name literally means 'good girl'?" Marceline asked, finally. There was a sunburn on her elbow that Bubblegum could see despite the shadows.

"Did you come back just to taunt me and get trivia wrong?" Bubblegum asked. She was tired, and hated that she still missed Marceline, that the lab and library seemed so quiet. "It means 'good and beautiful,'" Bubblegum corrected. She hated that Marceline got to pop in and out of her life. In and out of her own life. She dreamed of the ocean, sometimes. She loved her subjects but she sometimes wished guiltily to sneak away from them, if only for a while.

Marceline tensed, then settled from a crouch to cross-legged. "Figures," she said as she floated down closer, still upside down. Her hair brushed against Bubblegum's, black coiling amongst the pink strands of gum. "Brought you a souvenir," she said. Flipped over and stretched out so that she was floating above Bubblegum. She smelled like driftwood and salt spray, worn leather and strawberries.

Despite how angry she felt, Bubblegum knew this was the night she'd been waiting for, she had missed this girl so much. And now they were both sitting face to face with their knees resting on eachothers, heads close. She ached for Marceline to wrap her arms around her and never leave her side again.

Bubblegum, tired, felt her eyes slip closed. "Does it bother you that yours means 'dedicated to war'?" she murmured.

"Nah," Marceline whispered, and there was a cool press of her lips against Bubblegum's forehead. "It's pretty much what I figured." Bubblegum could only try to use her hair to cover her blushing cheeks.

In the morning, there was a t-shirt folded at the foot of the bed. Marceline was gone and all the colour had gone from the roses that surrounded the castle.


	4. Chapter 4

The camp fire flickers underneath Bubblegum's stretched out hands. They are sitting in the woods; Jake, at the top of the hill with Lady Rainicorn, picks out an ancient melody on his violin that drifts down to them through the trees. A fire is going. Finn is somewhere off in the dark, escorting a pair of lost squirrels home. Marceline, hovering so close to the fire that the tips of her hair swing above it, picks at her bassaxe.

Bubblegum wonders if Marceline could pull the red from the flames or if the fire would burn her.  
"I bet it won't be long till you're off again hey Marce? It gets pretty boring here."

"I kinda missed it here though," Marceline says, quietly. "Sometimes. Especially on perfect nights like this, with you and everyone else."

With you. She knew it wasn't meant that way but it was times like these when Bubblegum was filled with a sudden feeling of hope that something more could happen between them. She knew it was ridiculous to think that way though, at all. A princess shouldn't feel like this about a thousand year old vampire, a girl vampire, even if Marceline was still technically royalty, to the vampires at least.

Jake is singing now, low and lilting. There's an owl chorus from somewhere in the woods that joins in from a distance.

"We kind of missed you, too," Bubblegum says, staring down at her hands. Marceline's laugh is sharp and short, a bitterness that easily fades into a smirk as Bubblegum's head snaps up.

"Of course you did. Who else keeps things interesting around here?" The light from the fire is strange against her blue-grey skin, flickers of the two bite marks on her neck. "I just have to make sure that you don't take me for granted." She's grinning again, fangs hanging out on her bottom lip. Like this is just a joke, because everything is just a joke to her sometimes and-

"Why do you think so many of the flowers around the castle are red?" The words are out before Bubblegum can stop them.

"Um, because you like red?" Marceline says, then pauses.

"Yeah, it's okay, I guess," Bubblgum shrugs.

Marceline swings herself into an upright float and almost falls into the fire. "Wait. Do you-"

Even though she has no idea what to say, Bubblegum is going to have to count this as a victory, because Marceline is never without words. She's saved from having to find them however, because Finn comes tearing back through the clearing, yelling. There are four frost ogres at his heels, one stumbling through the fire, spraying Marceline with snow as the flames quench.

"Oh, you're going to pay for that," she says as she pulls up and swings the bassaxe from her shoulder and into her hand. Bubblegum sighs with fond exasperation as Finn pulls his sword from the soil and Jake comes flying down the hill with a wolf cry. Marceline presses her back against Bubblegum's, and they drop into position. Bubblegum feels like her grin is going to break her face. This is what she lives for, kicking ass with her best friends in the world.


	5. Chapter 5

When Bubblegum wakes up, it is almost dawn and Marceline is floating cross-legged by the window, watching the sun start to peak over the horizon. "You're wearing the t-shirt," she says.

Bubblegum blinks down at herself. "Of course I am."

Back years when the two were best friends, Marceline had been attempting to influence Bubblegum into bassaxes and all things rock music. Once successfully thinking she'd got Bubblegum into her favourite band, she'd given her a band shirt as a gift, without knowing Bubblegum was only pretending to like the band to keep her happy, as she had still loved her back then like she did now. Bubblegum wore it as a night shirt every single night since it was given to her.

"I didn't think-"

Bubblegum climbs out of bed, slowly. Settles down on top of the covers and lets her feet brush across the cold floor. When she was thirteen again, after she lost so much of her sugar after the Litch, her toes couldn't reach the ground. She knows it was an indulgence for her to stay thirteen, but she feels like she deserves to be selfish sometimes. She's been eighteen for so long. She thinks of thirteen like she thinks of the ocean, something far away, an abstract concept of 'want' and 'release.' Like how she dreams she could be like Marceline, Finn and Jake, always adventuring.

"It bothers me that I don't know you," she tells Marceline with her back to her. "That I don't understand you."

Marceline turns her head a quarter turn back to her, one pointed ear sticking out from her hair. "You could ask."

Bubblegum's fingers tighten on the covers. "Am I supposed to believe that you'd tell the truth?"

Marceline shrugs and turns away again. "I might."

"And how would I be able to tell?" There are so many things she'll never know. So many things she'll never be able to understand.

"Pretty much everything I say is true, in a way."

"Except for when you lie."

"Yeah. Except for then."

Marceline almost always means things when she says them. Bubblegum wonders if that's what upsets her most. That Marceline is old enough that she just… forgets. That Marceline looks at them and sees a lifetime in the blink of the eye, that she laughs and doesn't care about things that are a big deal to everyone else because she remembers a time before Ooo.

"I'd like to try to figure it out, though," Bubblegum says. "How to tell."

Marceline has turned towards her, floating with her back to the window and eyes sharp on Bubblegum, who pulls the t-shirt a little more tightly around herself. Bubblegum remembers the trees, and the contrast of the dark shadows between trunks and the airy light that casts over the candy forests. She reaches out and runs her hand through Marceline's hair, strands of thick dead hair at her skull instead of a flow of candy. She presses her palm to Marceline's cheek, and she can feel the bones beneath the cool skin.

Marceline grins wickedly, fangs denting her bottom lip, and eyes surprisingly soft. She floats down until her feet touch the ground and presses a quick, dry kiss to Bubblegum's lips. "I promise I'll try to keep it interesting."

Her feet stay on the ground, floating lower until she's on the same level as her. Bubblegum feels her heart tighten, twisting as every second goes past almost in slow motion, when nothing is happening. Then, Marceline plants another peck onto her lips, and makes sure to make it the longest lasting peck.

"Let me be like you," Bubblegum says with a gasp after they break apart.

"That good am I?" Marceline jokes, her feet slowly rising as she floats up above Bubblegum's level again. "You want to be an old, ancient vampire with nothing left in her life? Watch all your friends pass on as you keep on doing nothing productive and end up alone? Sounds like a good plan."

"That's not what I really meant," Bubblegum says, shocked. The thought of Marceline alone saddens her. And although she knew this was what Marceline has to go through, she really didn't acknowledge it until that moment when she could see the pain in her voice as she said it. "I feel on my own a lot. What eighteen-year-old girl should have to run a kingdom while her friends are out being their age and adventuring and discovering new things and finding out what their destiny is?"

"So... do you feel left out or are you just trying to get closer to me so you can hang around and adventure with somebody?" Marceline asks, it was hard to tell what tone she was speaking in or what she thought as there seemed to be no emotion in her voice.

_Use you?_ Bubblegum screamed inside her head. _I've loved you for years._

"I'm sure Finn will let you tag along with him and Jake." And like that, Marceline was gone. She could fly out of the window and glide down to the kingdom without touching the ground, holding her bassaxe in one hand.


End file.
